The Hidden Years

by Penny Jordan

  It wasn't possible to drive out to where the flock were grazing. She had to park her car beside the field gate and get out and walk the final mile or so, but it was a task she didn't mind. Tying a scarf over her hair, and pulling on her jacket, she set off. The wind had momentarily blown the sky clean of clouds and the sun shone warmly.

  High above the land a kestrel hovered… watching, waiting. She paused to watch him swoop downwards into a cornfield and pitied the tiny creature who was his victim even while she admired the control and grace of his swoop and the power which took him up again to hang motionless in watchful prey.

  Before turning to resume her climb, she looked behind her the way she had come and saw that someone else was coming up the hill towards her, his head bare, his dark hair tousled by the wind.

  She knew who it was from the clenching of her stomach muscles, the instant recognition of her soul and her heart, even before he called out her name and she recognised the distinctive Australian accent.

  Common sense told her that the worst thing she could do was to wait for him, and yet that was exactly What she did do, caught as helplessly in the snare of her own feelings as the small creature had been in the talons of the kestrel.

  'What a coincidence,' Lewis smiled as he caught up with her, although in point of fact it was no coincidence at all. This was his second visit to the summer pastures. It had been on his first visit, during his conversation with the shepherd, that he had discovered Liz was due to visit them later in the week.

  He had warned himself that what he was doing was folly, that curiosity was one thing, that something to take his mind off Elaine and Alistair could only be of benefit to him, and yet his instincts, his senses warned him that it was far more than idle curiosity that stirred his interest in Liz Danvers. Far, far more.

  This morning she looked younger than ever. He knew her age—five years younger than his own—but today she looked as though a whole decade could quite easily have separated them, and as he drew close to her he marvelled at the clear perfection of her skin, its softness, its paleness, so different from the sun-browned skins of his own countrywomen… How Elaine had bewailed the harshness of the outback sun, claiming that it was making her old before her time. She had hated the outback, hated Woolonga, hated him sometimes… or so she had claimed. The pity of it was that he hadn't listened to her, hadn't realised—if he had then perhaps both she and his son would still be alive today.

  Don't blame yourself, Ralph had told him. Don't descend into the depths of self-pity and guilt—it won't bring them back. Accept that Elaine was a very highly strung woman, whose outlook on life, whose mental strength, had become seriously undermined by the birth of their child. Sometimes it happened like that. He could not, must not blame himself for what had happened. But how could he not do so?

  She had never wanted to marry him. She had told him as much, but they had really had no choice in the matter. It had all been arranged for them by their respective fathers, both of them indomitable men used to having their every word obeyed, used to the power and control that came from owning thousands upon thousands of acres of land and from running on that land thousands of head of sheep. Both men had been autocrats, both used to ruling their own private worlds as they saw fit. And they saw fit to unite their vast tracts of land in the marriage of their son and daughter.

  Perhaps if they hadn't both been killed in the same plane accident, a plane flown by his father… Elaine had adored her own father, had come close to worshipping him in fact. After his death she had become very withdrawn; she had blamed Lewis's father for what had happened and, through him, Lewis himself.

  It had been shortly after the news of the accident had been brought to them that she had miscarried their first child.

  After that she hadn't let him touch her for almost three years. He had tried everything, wondering if she realised that he now had as little appetite for their marriage as she had herself, but they were married, divorce was out of the question, and they had to have a child, an heir for Woolonga. In the end he had been forced to take matters into his own hands. Even now, he shuddered when he thought of the way he had deliberately got her drunk, and then carried her virtually comatose to bed, undressing her and then entering her unresponsive, flaccid body, summoning every ounce of will-power he'd had in order to do so.

  Afterwards she had rounded on him with a stream of profanities as she'd cursed him for the death of his father and for the death of her child.

  He had wanted to tell her that it wasn't his fault, that he mourned their child as much as she, but he knew already that he would be wasting his time, that something in her had turned away from him and inwards.

  Sometimes the outback affected women like that. It was a demanding land, a man's land, cruel to those women who dared to brave its harshness. It took a woman of great strength, great fortitude and endurance—a woman with a great love for her man—to withstand its cruelties.

  Elaine had not been like that. She had been weak and vulnerable and it had given him no satisfaction to have compelled her to resume their physical relationship. He had hoped that perhaps another child would help her to overcome her grief, her almost obsessive clinging to the past and her father's death, and when they had discovered that she was pregnant it had seemed as though his hopes were answered.

  Certainly she had prepared for the baby's birth with a vigour, an enthusiasm that had lightened his anxiety for her. Their marriage could never be the kind of relationship he had once idealistically hoped for, and if he could not love her with passion and delight then he could at least cherish her and honour her both as his wife and the mother of his children.

  The outback life was a harsh one, with scant time for introspection or idleness, and certainly he had never been tempted to break his marriage vows even if he had had the opportunity to do so. He had married Elaine thinking he was doing the right thing, for Woolonga, for himself and for her. His father had hinted to him that she would welcome the marriage, that she was in love with him, and he had only discovered after they were married that this was not true, that she had married him in obedience to her own father, and that if she loved any man it was him and not her new husband.

  It was nervousness and nothing more, a fear of her own feelings, a fear of somehow revealing them, that made Liz ask as he caught up with her, 'Have you come to England without your wife, Mr McLaren? Doesn't she mind? I—'

  'My wife is dead,' Lewis told her abruptly, and then, seeing her face, apologised, 'I'm sorry. I was abrupt…'

  'You're sorry.' Liz turned a white, strained face towards the hills, unable to bring herself to look directly at him. 'I'm the one who should apologise,' she said huskily. 'I had no idea… Vic mentioned in his letters that you were married. He never…'

  Was that why he had come to England—to try and forget? He must have loved her very much. What had she been like? Tall, and sun-bronzed with a wild mane of hair…?

  'I didn't love her. I never loved her… I should never have married her.'

  The quiet, slow words ran through her like a shock. When she looked at him he was standing motionless, his profile carved against the blue arc of the sky. She hadn't realised until now how tall he was… but then she hadn't stood so close to him the last time they had met.

  Silly, trivial thoughts passed through her head, like how well the tweed jacket he was wearing fitted him, and how very male he looked, how full of life and vitality. She liked the way his hair grew on his scalp and against the tanned, taut column of his throat…

  'She killed herself… took her own life and the life of our child…'

  Again his voice was quiet and slow, the words enunciated carefully as though they were unfamiliar to him, as though he had never said them before, and she knew instinctively that he had not… that she was the first person to whom he had unburdened himself, to whom he had talked of the terrible tragedy which had blighted his life.

  'I blame myself…' He wasn't looking at her now. 'I should hav
e, seen, should have known…'

  Steadily Liz sat down on the grass and patted the earth beside her, inviting him to join her as she asked softly, 'Tell me about her…'

  Once, the old Liz, the Liz with whom she was familiar, would have shrunk from making such an invitation, from prying into the life of another human being, from witnessing his anguish and pain, but suddenly she was a new Liz, a different Liz, a Liz who saw beyond her own fears and needs and who reached out instinctively to offer him the succour she knew he wanted.

  He sat down beside her and started to talk, slowly, hesitantly at first, leaving nothing out, looking directly into her eyes now and again as he told her of his guilt for his unwitting neglect of his wife, his complacency in believing that she was content, his culpability in assuming he had the right to decide what was best for her.

  'I thought when Alistair was conceived that she was happy. She seemed to be… She was anxious, of course, during her pregnancy—we all were, after her earlier miscarriage. I wanted her to have the best medical care, and so, three months before Alistair was due, I flew her down to Melbourne. She had an aunt there, and I visited her as often as I could. She seemed to thrive in the city— she seemed to be so happy. I thought…' He swallowed.

  'She had a long and difficult labour, but once Alistair was born… She seemed to worship him. I felt quite jealous at times—she would barely let me near him…

  'When Alistair was a month old I took them both home to Woolonga. At first everything seemed all right, but then gradually Elaine seemed to become more and more depressed. I wanted her to consult our doctor but she wouldn't. She said she missed Melbourne, so I promised her that we'd go there for Christmas, but when Alistair was six weeks old and I was out mustering, she picked him up and carried him out to the creek. We'd dammed it to make a pool that we used for bathing before we had a proper pool installed.

  'We think she must have just walked right into it holding the baby, because when we found them they were still together…' His voice broke, and Liz felt her eyes sting with sympathetic, helpless tears.

  'She'd left me a note, saying that since I'd stolen her child and killed it she was now stealing and killing mine…'

  She could hear the tears in his voice and moved instinctively towards him, putting her arms around him as naturally as though she had been doing it all her life, cradling him to her while he wept, knowing that somehow or other fate had decreed for both of them this meeting place in their lives, this coming together and bonding, and that no matter how hard she had tried she would have been powerless to avoid it.

  It was as though somewhere inside her a missing piece had suddenly slid into place, setting in motion the eternal, soundless music to which the whole universe moved… as though she had found a half of herself which had previously been lost, as though for the first time in her life she was truly complete.

  She had known love before: the love of a child for her parents and her family, the love of a mother for her child—she had even thought she had known love for Kit, however unwise and foolish that love had been—but as she held Lewis to her and shared the outpouring of his grief and guilt for the deaths of his wife and child, as she listened to his words of contrition, pain and anger, she knew that she had never truly known before what love was.

  But, even in the moment when she acknowledged that somehow, somewhere, by some alchemy she could not begin to understand, fate had brought her face to face with this very special man, she also knew that they could not be together. Her course through life was already set. She had commitments, had made promises she could not break, had loyalties, responsibilities, duties, all of which weighed far heavier in the scales of life and conscience than her love for Lewis.

  When Lewis raised his head and looked at her, the look he gave her only confirmed what she already knew.

  'How has this happened?' he asked her tenderly. 'How have we managed to find one another like this? Oh, my love, when I think how easily we might not have met…'

  'Perhaps it would have been better if we had not,' Liz told him quietly.

  For a moment he was very still.

  'You can't mean that, and don't try to tell me that you don't feel it too… That you don't know, as I know…'

  She had to stop him. To allow him to go on would only add to the pain they were both going to suffer.

  'I'm married,' she reminded him huskily. 'I have a husband… a son…'

  'You're mine,' Lewis contradicted her flatly. 'You're mine, Liz, now and throughout eternity. I think I knew it the first time I saw you… Why do you think I've been hanging around here? Trying to tell myself I'm acting like a fool, and yet knowing nothing on this earth could make me leave. I knew you'd be here today. Your shepherd told me.

  'Oh, God, Liz, after everything that's happened, everything that my life has been, I still can't believe I've been lucky enough to find you. Don't try to send me away, because I won't go, and don't try to tell me that you love Edward either,' he challenged her flatly, 'because I won't believe you. Not now!'

  'But I do love him,' Liz told him sadly. And it was true. She did love Edward, not as she might love a man, not in the way she now knew that a woman did love the one man who was her chosen mate, out of instinct and desire. No, her love for Edward was a love born of necessity, both his and her own. He had helped her when she needed help and she would never allow herself to forget that.

  'Liz, please.'

  She turned her head automatically, unable to resist the plea in his voice.

  Because they were still sitting down on the grass the disparity in their heights was not as noticeable, so that when she looked at him her gaze could easily meet the steady green regard of his.

  The flesh round his eyes burned from long hours in the hot outback sunshine, was fanned with small lines, the jut of his cheekbones hard and planed.

  The hand he lifted to cover hers was tanned and calloused, enveloping hers completely. He had removed his jacket and pushed up the sleeves of his shirt and her stomach clenched on a dangerous ache of need as she looked at the muscled hardness of his forearm and knew without knowing how she came by the knowledge that to be held by those arms, to be caressed by his hands, to be a part of his body, would touch her so completely and so wholly that if once she allowed him to love her she would never want to send him away.

  And yet even as she held up her hand in a mute appeal to him to stop what they had started now, before it went any further, she couldn't help focusing on his mouth, watching the movement of his lips as he formed words her outer ear didn't hear, because all her senses were absorbed in taking into herself as much of the essence of him as she could so that it could be stored deep within her memory, a panacea for the days, the months, the years ahead when those memories of him would be all she had to sustain her.

  'Liz, my darling one… Don't deny our love.'

  She heard the words, felt their agony, their desire, felt her heart seize in unbearable pain and her eyes fill with tears as his hands lifted to her shoulders and held her, so gently, so lightly that she could quite easily have broken away, could quite easily have avoided the downward descent of his mouth. And yet for some reason she had no will to move.

  When he kissed her it was with tenderness and joy, like a man worshipping at a shrine he had long believed denied to him. Beneath his her mouth yielded helplessly to her need. The kiss deepened, his arms enfolding her so that she was wrapped in tenderness and love.

  It would be the easiest thing now to open the doors to the physical urgency of their love, to give herself to him here on the downs beneath the clean wind-washed sky…

  No, not the easiest thing… the most necessary, precious and right thing; but even as her rebellious heart demanded to know why she should not after all have this brief time of happiness, of love, her conscience, her upbringing, her deep and strong sense of loyalty were already closing the door on her need. She might not be able to deny the love in her heart—that was impossible—but she couldn't betra
y Edward, David and all that their lives together were: each month and year, carefully built and nurtured, so that she had believed she had built their marriage into something strong and sturdy enough to withstand even the most violent of storms. No, she couldn't do that…

  Not even for this wonderful, special man, whom she knew now she would love beyond life and time.

  As she eased herself away from him, she touched his face lingeringly, her emotions showing plainly in her eyes as she told him quietly, 'I can't, Lewis. I can't betray Edward…'

  He looked at her for a long time, still holding her, so that she could feel their pulses beating in unison, as though their bodies were already one.

  'No,' he said despairingly. 'But can you betray our love? And if you stay with him that is what you will be doing. Leave him, Liz, come back to Australia with me…'

  'I can't—'

  'If you're thinking of your son, of David—he will come too.'

  She shook her head. 'Edward would never let me take him, and I can't leave them, Lewis. Either of them. They need me…'

  'I need you,' he told her. 'I need you, Liz. Oh, God… you don't know how much I need you.'

  She felt tears sting her eyes… How could she deny him, when his need, his love were her own? But she had to. She had no choice. She had chosen her path when she married Edward and she must stick to it.

  'I must go,' she told him quietly, standing up. 'The shepherd will be wondering where I am. Please don't come with me, Lewis…'